During breakfast Dad would hand over “a few chores” that he wanted us to do that day. Dad would describe in detail any “new to us” chore and ask if we had any questions.
We never did. See, if you asked too many questions, then you didn’t have an excuse to “misunderstand” what was supposed to be done. And a lack of understanding was critical to our day plan.
The short list was always on a college ruled yellow legal pad.
Most days he kept it down to only one page.
After the breakfast chore review, Mom and Dad would head off to work, secure in the self-delusional knowledge that they had left plenty of chores on a list to keep us busy all day long and out of trouble.
Our folks were incurably optimistic.
Those chores may have kept us out of “more trouble” but they never kept us out of “spectacular trouble”, and certainly were clearly not up to the task of keeping us out of trouble altogether.
Because Barry, Jeff and I had an advanced system in place to check off each and every chore on the list. We could complete chores faster than anyone I have ever seen before or since.
Notice I didn’t say “better”.
In fact, truth be told, it wasn’t unusual to find the same chore on a list later in the week because Dad was less than thrilled about how it had been “done” earlier. And Dad was often heard to mutter that he couldn’t understand how we never had enough time to do it right the first time, but always had enough time to do it over.
But we had picked up on something he never seemed to realize. Dad wanted us to have time to have fun. And so, he subconsciously limited the length of the chore list on any given day. So, if we did part of a chore right on Monday, did a second portion of it right on Tuesday, and finished it properly on Wednesday, we had effectively ducked out of two chores that would otherwise have used up adventure time in our week.
In any case, as the car backed out of the driveway to carry Mom and Dad out to Sandia National Labs in Livermore, the three of us would figure out how we could split up the chore list and knock the thing down to size. Some chores had all three of us on them at the same time; some had only one of us tending to them; and some were started by one and finished by another.
Whatever it took to get them done in a hurry. Now I would contend we did better job than just simply pencil whipping the list on any given day; but would have to admit, if pressed, that you could say we used a really long flexible pencil on some of those chores.
But, a little “under-diligent” or not, our goal was to get through the list and leave us time to enjoy our summer.
We often used that time to head out the railroad tracks hunting glass insulators that had blown down from the old wooden power poles, loose rail spikes, or to shoot marbles at fleeing Jackrabbits.
Or we’d grab fishing poles and head out to either old man Baranus’ pond or east out of town to the Springtown golf course to sneak fish their lakes and water hazards from the cover of the bushes.
Once in a while it was out to the vineyards with our shotguns, or off to the rock quarries with our .22s. And often it was biking out to either the Veterans Administration Hospital Park out Arroyo Road or the lake out Mines Road.
Whatever we did, we scheduled them such that we knocked out almost all of the chores before we headed off for our adventure. But we always saved one chore that would require all three of us and left it undone when we headed off.
That way, after our adventure, we could hustle home; timed so that we would all be still at work finishing the last chore as Mom and Dad came back home from work.
Certainly wouldn’t have done to be “chillin” in the basement watching TV when they came home.
The chore list might end up longer the next day.
© Copyright 2016, Marty Vandermolen
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